


Sandwich Thief

by LightInside



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, Based on a Tumblr Post, Comedy, F/F, Sandwich, if you can really count it as comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 07:06:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9373535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightInside/pseuds/LightInside
Summary: Someone keeps stealing Korra's lunch and she is very upset about it





	

Korra threw her arms over the side of Asami’s cubicle and rested her chin on them with a frustrated sigh. Asami glanced up at her girlfriend before minimizing her work and sitting back in her chair to look up at Korra fully. “Something wrong?”

“Somebody stole my sandwich. AGAIN.”

This had been a recurring event for most of the week. Asami had already bought Korra a replacement lunch three times. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I could order us a pizza from that place you like down the street.”

“That’d be good, thanks. I just… ugh, I hate not knowing who’s doing it! I wish I could get some retribution somehow, or at least tell them to stop.”

Asami pulled up the online ordering site for Korra’s favorite work pizza, selecting their usual as she spoke. “You could write them a note. Leave it on the refrigerator or something so they see it.”

Korra instantly perked up. “That’s actually a really good idea. What should it say though? ‘Stop taking my sandwich’ seems kind of… I don’t know, obvious?”

Asami hit the submit button on the pizza order and stood up. “Here, let’s go back to your desk and I’ll help you write one.”

“Awesome! You’re the best,” she said, turning to lead the way to her cubicle a couple of rows over.

It wasn’t long before the couple had penned a suitable missive for the sandwich thief:

> _To the person who keeps stealing my sandwiches (turkey and swiss with mayo on rye)_
> 
> _This is ridiculous. We are all full-grown adults, not children. Please take responsibility for your actions and stop stealing other people’s property._

Just as the page finished sliding out of the printer, Asami’s phone buzzed with a notification that their pizza was being delivered, and she went to let the delivery driver in the building while Korra hung her sign. The two of them shared lunch in the break room happily, Korra convinced that her sign would convince the thief to leave her lunch alone in the future.

About half an hour after lunch had ended, Korra found a suitable stopping point in her project and decided to get a drink. The break room’s vending machine stocked her favorite juice blend, and she had every intention of getting a bottle before she was interrupted by a disturbing sight on the refrigerator. A return note from the thief.

> _Dear Turkey and Swiss on Rye,_
> 
> _I have your precious sandwich. It’s safe. For now. Put 10 dollars on the plate in the fridge or you’ll never see it undigested again._

Outraged, she snapped a photo of the note and took it to Asami, holding the phone down in front of her computer screen over the cubicle wall. “I can’t believe this! Now they’re _ransoming_ my sandwich! This is ridiculous!”

“Who ransoms a sandwich?”

“I wish I knew! I’m going to write them a note back. Come make sure I don’t say anything stupid.”

Asami obliged, following her fuming girlfriend back to her own desk and watching over her shoulder as Korra angry-typed out another brief note, one which Asami gave her approval of without any need for editing. Korra printed it immediately and set off to add the new note to the fridge.

> _Dear Sandwich Thief,_
> 
> _Please grow up and just return my sandwich! This is very unprofessional! If I ever find out who’s doing this I won’t hesitate to CONTACT HR!!!_

Asami squeezed her hand as Korra looked at the notes on the fridge, reading both hers and the thief’s over again. “Hopefully that will be the end of it, sweetie.”

Spoiler: that was not the end of it.

A mere fifteen minutes later when Korra checked to see if her note had worked and her sandwich returned, she found yet another note.

> _Dear Turkey and Swiss_
> 
> _For every hour you continue to refuse my demands, I’ll remove another bite of this sandwich. Please take this seriously. We are professionals, after all._
> 
> _-Sandwich Thief_

Attached was a photo of the sandwich lying on a plate, a knife nearby having clearly cut a corner off. Part of the thief’s hand was visible as well, holding the corner in question. Korra narrowly avoided developing a twitch in her eye as she took another picture of the offending note and stormed back to Asami’s desk to plot the thief’s downfall.

“Who do you think it could be,” Asami asked. “The picture doesn’t give us much to work with, even with part of the hand included. Skin tone, I suppose. So, we know they’re on the lighter side. That only leaves…two-thirds of the office.”

“I bet it’s Mako. He’s been weird around me ever since we broke up, and I know he’d love to get under your skin through me too.”

“But these notes don’t really sound much like him.”

“Could be on purpose to throw us off.”

“If that’s the case, it could be almost anyone.”

“Aaaargh! Well, if we can’t do anything about it, maybe HR can. I’m going to see them.”

Asami stood up quickly as Korra started to turn away. “I’ll come with you.” Korra nodded and the two of them headed for the elevator, taking it two floors up and down the hall to the human resources office. Asami knocked on the door of the HR representative for their department and was immediately greeted with a ‘Come in’, so she turned the knob and let Korra enter first.

Opal Beifong was sitting behind her desk, in the middle of filling out some form or other. She looked up at her two guests with a smile as she set her pen down. “Ladies. What can I do for you?”

“I’ve got an issue with a coworker,” Korra responded simply.

“I’m just here for moral support,” Asami chimed in.

“Alright,” Opal said, opening a drawer in her desk and pulling out a different form. “Which coworker is the other party?”

“I, uh… don’t actually know. That’s the problem.”

“Oh.”

Korra explained the situation to Opal, with occasional input from Asami. They told her that the sandwich thief had been striking all week, and showed her the pictures Korra had taken of the notes. Opal listened attentively, then seemed to think about the situation for a while.

“Well, I don’t see that there’s very much we can do without knowing who took the sandwich. There aren’t cameras through most of the building, so it’s not like we have footage we can check. I could try writing a note back to them for you, at least. Maybe we can catch them in the act of responding, or maybe an HR presence will be enough to convince them to stop.”

Korra looked at Asami who could only return a shrug. “It’s better than nothing.”

“Okay then.” Opal swiveled in her chair over to her computer and began composing her missive for the sandwich thief. Once it was finished and printed, she took it from her printer and accompanied Korra back downstairs to attach it to the refrigerator. Asami, upon the instructions of her HR rep, returned to work with thanks for the support from her girlfriend. Opal’s new note read:

> _Dear Sandwich Thief,_
> 
> _Hi. This is Opal from HR. Please return the sandwich and we won’t investigate the matter any further._

By this point, the sandwich thief fiasco was the talk of the entire office, gossip flying from cubicle to cubicle at lightning speed. Yet, somehow, no one seemed to have seen the thief posting the signs or staging the photo with the sandwich. But that gossip string happened to reach Korra and Opal’s ears while they were standing in front of the elevator, Opal giving the typical HR ‘let me know if anything else happens’ speech. It had only been a few minutes, and a new note from the sandwich thief had already been posted. They rushed back to the break room to find the shortest message yet.

> _Buy me a pizza_

It was followed by an even shorter message, typed out by Opal on Korra’s computer and posted seconds later.

> _No_

Opal subsequently returned upstairs, and Korra returned to her desk. She couldn’t believe how brazen the sandwich thief was, taunting HR like that. She hoped that, with no way to benefit from the exchange now that HR was involved and refusing their demands, the matter would be brought to a swift conclusion. It wasn’t.

A short while later, when Korra once again returned to check for the return of her sandwich, she found yet another note, this one with another picture attached, this one simply of the perpetrator’s hand holding the sandwich.

> _By the way… I’m not even going to eat it. Just gonna chew it up and spit it out._
> 
> _How does that make you feel?_

She composed a quick note-based reply of ‘You’re the worst!’ before texting a picture of the latest note to Opal and going to complain to Asami again. She was glad she had such a supportive girlfriend, sharing her outrage at the thief’s taunting. She even tried to console Korra that it was ‘just a sandwich’, but of course it wasn’t just a sandwich any more. It was a conflict, it was a shadowy figure tormenting her, not to mention costing her generous girlfriend additional lunch-buying, and she wanted to know who had the gall to do this to her.

After a suitable amount of consolation, Korra returned to her desk, where she found an in-office memo from Opal detailing a plan she had devised to attempt to identify the thief. Korra gave her assent, then sat back and waited.

As the end of the work day approached, Korra heard gossip of yet another new note from the thief, and reluctantly made her way to the break room to see it.

> _Oh my dear T-Swizzle. I’m so very far from being the worst. Mankind’s flaws can’t be judged on such a simple spectrum as that. Open your eyes. You lash out at such pettiness, but ignore the hideous nature of the world at large. There is a hunger my dear Turkey and Swiss on Rye, a hunger that is spreading from the deepest, darkest pits of this hellish corporate chasm. This sandwich is the birthcry of a new era, and when the revolution finally comes, pitiful vagrants like yourself will be the first to be devoured._

Here, the message was interrupted by another image, this one of an empty plate covered in breadcrumbs and sandwich drippings, accompanied by a crumpled napkin and a knife.

> _The deed is done. Weep for the world you once knew. For it is but crumbs upon the sill of despair. Soon to be swept away by the righteous gusts of Change._

Korra returned to her desk glumly, still with a hope that Opal would identify the culprit, but feeling as though it would be a hollow victory even if she did. The loss of the sandwich was startling, perhaps even pathetically devastating to her. She went about the remainder of her work for the day in a haze, scarcely noticing the chatter that still surrounded her. Asami came by to rub her back and ask if she was okay, but otherwise she was undisturbed until she finally took a break with only half an hour remaining in the work day. It was at that time that she discovered she had missed a text from Opal. ‘I’ve posted another message’ was all it read.

Not sure whether she even really cared any more, Korra nonetheless made her way to the break room to see the note. She decided to stop at the vending machine for a pick-me-up drink, and was surprised when Asami entered while she was making her selection.

“Hey Asami, grabbing a last-minute snack?”

Asami seemed just as surprised to see Korra. “Oh, no, I remembered that I still had a container in the fridge from when I brought lunch the other day. I figured I should grab it while I was thinking about it so I didn’t forget it again.”

Korra pressed the button to select her beverage and the machine whirred as it dispensed the bottle. “Well, you can check out the fridge with me then. I’m kind of done caring about it, but Opal says she posted another note.”

Korra took Asami’s hand and guided her over to the fridge. Sure enough, there was another note.

> _Hi, Opal from HR again._
> 
> _Asami, we checked the office’s printer queue and traced the requests back to your desk. Could you please come to see me at your earliest convenience._

Korra’s hand dropped Asami’s, and she slowly turned to look at her girlfriend, who was still staring at the page, unmoving. She thought back over everything that had happened, the letters, the multiple days of stealing lunches, the bought replacement lunches, helping Korra write the notes to begin with. The entire thing had been an elaborate ruse, a plot perpetrated by her own girlfriend purely for amusement.

“How could you?”

Still not looking away from the refrigerator, Asami reached inside her handbag and withdrew a piece of paper. Slowly, she reached out and tapped it to the refrigerator just below Opal’s latest note. In very small writing in the center of the page, it read:

> _I’m sorry please don’t fire me_

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this tumblr post](http://darklthemsby.tumblr.com/post/155567557591/rubiks-calamity-capricorn-onthe-cob). I couldn't not. Probably the least serious thing I've ever written. Sorry not sorry.
> 
> Did you guess the thief?


End file.
